Some days I’m just tired. This is one of those days. And I don’t mean physically tired. That comes and goes, but this emotional tiredness seems to set in like cold seeping into my bones. Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not complaining. It just seems that life gets more complicated and more exhausting the longer I go on living. Every day seems to tack on one more thing for me to think about, to sift through, or to deal with. It’s the act of dealing that makes me so tired, but I’m sure that’s true of everyone, even those happy-go-lucky types you see on the street who seem not to have a care in the world.

Because, believe me, the carefree thing doesn’t last. It’s a nice way of being ignorant, of pretending the world isn’t such a dreadful place with horrendous surprises around every corner. It’s a good way to delude yourself into thinking you’re liked by everyone and that no problem’s too big that you can’t overcome it. But that’s not the type of world we live in. We live in a world where problems can be insurmountable, where people can be ruinous, and where nothing final is quite the sum of its parts. It’s a tiring place where keeping up means leaving pieces of yourself behind.

It’s one of those days when positive things happened, like the first interview in a long process of interviews that will make up my next project when all is said and done. I also rediscovered something that had been missing for far too long and that I thought I had seen for the last time. I even had some quiet time to just sit and write today, something that has been few and far between, especially lately. And even though the negative parts interfered with my joy again today, as they always do, I am not going to let them to frustrate me as I have in the past. But that doesn’t stop the fact that I’m still bone tired.

Too many people are judgmental these days. They see something they don’t understand and they can’t help themselves, it seems. It becomes fair game for their evil eyes and for their holier-than-thou attitudes. Then a whispering begins and we’re left playing defense against the dark arts, a game that is more a pounding than anything else. And it all just drags down my mood. It makes me want to crawl under the covers, shut my eyes, and shut out the world for a while, to dream of something better, of something easier. But that’s not life, and if I block out the negatives I can’t appreciate the positives either. I don’t want that, so I keep my eyes open. I keep my head up while the judgments fly.

Because I can’t stop them from coming, but I can stop how they affect me. Eventually.